R.I.'s governor urges opposition to Atlantic offshore drilling plan

Thursday

Feb 8, 2018 at 8:05 PMFeb 8, 2018 at 8:05 PM

In an interview in her State House office, she said the Trump administration’s plan to overturn an Obama-era ban on offshore drilling along the nation’s East Coast poses a threat to Rhode Island’s commercial fishing industry and the beaches along the state’s 400 miles of coastline.

Alex Kuffner Journal Staff Writer kuffneralex

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Gov. Gina Raimondo is urging Rhode Islanders to speak up against a federal plan that would open waters off the state’s coast to drilling for oil and gas.

In an interview in her State House office, she said the Trump administration’s plan to overturn an Obama-era ban on offshore drilling along the nation’s East Coast poses a threat to Rhode Island’s commercial fishing industry and the beaches along the state’s 400 miles of coastline.

Raimondo said she requested the meeting with The Providence Journal to raise public awareness about the drilling plan. It was the first time in her tenure as governor that she has asked for such a meeting in regard to an environmental issue.

“I find the whole thing to be really quite alarming,” she said. “This might happen if we don’t oppose it loudly enough.”

In January 1996, the barge North Cape spilled 828,000 gallons of home heating oil off Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, killing thousands of shore birds and millions of lobsters.

It is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in Rhode Island history, but the size of the spill was relatively small. The Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 in Alaska totaled 11 million gallons of crude while the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill may have released up to 20 times that amount into the Gulf of Mexico.

“The greatest concern would be an oil spill,” Raimondo said. “I was in high school when Exxon Valdez happened so I still remember that very vividly. The BP oil spill seems like it was yesterday. That could happen here. I think Rhode Islanders need to know that.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically-recoverable oil on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Less than a tenth of the total potential resources are on the Atlantic coast.

The proposal released by the Department of the Interior in January would take effect from 2019 to 2024. Lease sales for the North Atlantic region would take place in 2021.

Between 1976 and 1982, 10 exploratory oil wells were drilled in Georges Bank southeast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but none panned out. Around the same time, Shell Oil spent billions of dollars looking for oil and gas off the New Jersey coast but found no meaningful deposits. In all, 43 wells were drilled in the North Atlantic without success.

The new drilling plan has been widely condemned in Rhode Island. The state’s congressional delegation has come out against it, as have Attorney General Peter Kilmartin and environmental groups.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a leading voice on the environment in the Senate, has described the idea of drilling for fossil fuels on the Atlantic coast as unrealistic for economic reasons and because of the level of opposition.

“When you get near coastal communities, people get very fierce about defending them,” he told The Journal in a recent interview. “I can't even imagine what would be touched off if they said they were going to drill off Rhode Island."

The Interior Department did not respond to specific concerns about the plan, saying only that it is seeking public input "to ensure all viewpoints are taken into consideration as the Department moves forward."

Raimondo raised her opposition to the plan in a phone call with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke last month. During their conversation, he made a commitment to visit Rhode Island, Raimondo said, but there has been no follow-up since.

“He did get on the phone but it was really just, ‘I hear you. I’m open to it. I promise I’ll come up and meet with you,' " she said.

When asked about Zinke visiting Rhode Island, a spokesperson for Interior said that no announcements were ready to be made.

Raimondo said the Trump administration has been “playing politics” in drawing up the plan, excluding Florida at the request of its Republican governor while so far resisting entreaties from her and the Democratic governors of other states.

She said she will try to raise the issue with President Donald Trump when he appears at the annual meeting of governors that will take place in Washington Feb. 23 and 24. She also will attempt to meet in person with Zinke and plans to talk with other governors about ways to fight the drilling proposal.

Raimondo has been criticized by some environmental advocates for not taking stands against the fossil fuel-burning power plant proposed by Chicago-based Invenergy in Burrillville or the liquefied natural gas processing plant proposed by National Grid in Providence.

She said the criticism is fair but added that both are in the midst of regulatory processes that she either has no say over — the LNG project, which requires a federal permit — or is prohibited from interfering in — the Invenergy plant, which is seeking approval from the state Energy Facility Siting Board.

When it was put to her that the best way to prevent offshore drilling might be to reduce demand for fossil fuels, she agreed. She noted her announcement on Monday that the state plans to seek 400 megawatts of power by the end of the summer from wind, solar, small hydropower and other renewable sources to help meet her administration’s goal of reaching 1,000 megawatts of clean energy in 2020.

She also said that she fully supports a carbon tax but said that, for it to be effective and fair, it should be implemented nationwide, or, at the very least, across a region.

“We should be weaning ourselves off oil, not searching for more of it,” she said.

Public meetings on the drilling plan are currently being held around the country. A meeting in Providence is scheduled for Feb. 28. Raimondo will hold a press conference the day of the meeting to reiterate her opposition to the plan.

“One governor did get an exemption,” Raimondo said. “Maybe if we make enough noise, we can get an exemption, too.”

— akuffner@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7457

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